A Study on the Vulnerabilities of Mobile Apps associated with Software Modules
Abstract
This paper reports a large-scale study that aims to understand how mobile application (app) vulnerabilities are associated with software libraries. We analyze both free and paid apps. Studying paid apps was quite meaningful because it helped us understand how differences in app development/maintenance affect the vulnerabilities associated with libraries. We analyzed 30k free and paid apps collected from the official Android marketplace. Our extensive analyses revealed that approximately 70%/50% of vulnerabilities of free/paid apps stem from software libraries, particularly from third-party libraries. Somewhat paradoxically, we found that more expensive/popular paid apps tend to have more vulnerabilities. This comes from the fact that more expensive/popular paid apps tend to have more functionality, i.e., more code and libraries, which increases the probability of vulnerabilities. Based on our findings, we provide suggestions to stakeholders of mobile app distribution ecosystems.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1702.03112,
title = {A Study on the Vulnerabilities of Mobile Apps associated with Software Modules},
author = {Takuya Watanabe and Mitsuaki Akiyama and Fumihiro Kanei and Eitaro Shioji and Yuta Takata and Bo Sun and Yuta Ishi and Toshiki Shibahara and Takeshi Yagi and Tatsuya Mori},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.03112},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
This is full version of the following paper: "Understanding the Origins of Mobile App Vulnerabilities: A Large-scale Measurement Study of Free and Paid Apps" Proceedings of IEEE/ACM 14th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2017), May 2017